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You don't often see a former Spurs player ripping open packs of Major League Baseball cards at a trading cards shop, much less bemoaning how he had to recoup some of his most prized cards of himself after his young son gave them to his friends at school.
Then again, retired NBA veteran George Hill is a lot like most guys who break boxes and blister packs at Sports Cards Plus, a family-owned store just north of Castle Hills that's been in the collectible cards business about as long as the 39-year-old Hill has dribbled a basketball.
Hill also collected cards when he was a kid. And his kid also got him back into the hobby.
"(And) that's what opened back up the love for it," Hill said. "If my son didn't do it, I probably wouldn't have got back into it."
Sports cards have bridged and bonded generations almost as long as sports themselves. And if you're a Spurs fan, there's never been a better time to get into the game, especially when the team that first drafted Hill into the NBA is making so much noise in card collecting.
There is, of course, Wembymania. Since Victor Wembanyama suited up for the Spurs two seasons ago, the generational talent has towered over the sports cards market with more than 560,000 cards graded, according to GemRate. One rookie card alone sold for a staggering $860,000, while others such as the rare Wembanyama cards at Sports Cards Plus sell on the secondary market for several thousand dollars each.
Meanwhile, Spurs rookie Dylan Harper and Spurs guard and reigning Rookie of the Year, Stephon Castle, lead the card collecting charge in the new 2025-26 Topps Chrome Basketball set, a premium version of Topps' regular sports cards that's one of the most popular series in the hobby.
Chrome Basketball dropped Thursday with a whopping 31 different Harper cards. As for Castle, he graces what Topps bills as "the crown jewel" of the new Chrome collection: a 1-of-1 autographed Gold Logoman card, which features a special gold version of the NBA logo the player wore on the back of his jersey. Logoman cards are some of the most sought-after and valuable cards in the hobby. The new set also has four such Castle cards without the signature.
Wembanyama still has a commanding presence in the new Chrome series with 19 different cards of the French phenom.
Since launching Sports Cards Plus in 1992, owner Charlie DiPietro has seen the hobby explode several times thanks to Spurs superstars. It happened when David Robinson was a rookie, he said, then again with Tim Duncan.
When it comes to Wembanyama's impact on card collecting, "I call it the third wave," DiPietro said. "And it's really exploded, even more than Tim Duncan, more than David Robinson. And I think it's because there's already a lot of people collecting. And it's brought a lot more new interest. So it's doing really well."
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These aren't your bubble gum cards of old. Sports cards today are a $13 billion industry, offering myriad versions of autographed cards and other variants in packs and boxes that can range from a few bucks to five figures based on card scarcity and odds of pulling such grails.
The new Chrome Basketball cards alone go for anywhere between $19.99 for a Hanger box of 15 cards at Target and Walmart to $379.99 for a Hobby Box of 80 cards with one autograph at specialty stores.
Which is why Hill and the experts behind his favorite card shop urge new and returning collectors to focus on having fun within a budget. Chase that favorite player or team for the love, not the fast buck. Basically, enjoy that timeless childhood feeling that's at the heart of the hobby, whether it's with your own child or just your inner child.
"If you're going into it just trying to make money off of it, the card gods won't bless you," Hill said. "But if you're going into it for reasons (like) to have fun and learn it and embrace it, I think good cards come your way."
As Hill noted earlier, his son was the reason he got back into the hobby. A few years ago, his son's school friends asked him if his dad could sign their own George Hill cards. That led to his son doling out his dad's own cards like they were candy.
Two of those cards were Hill's own Logoman cards from his days with the Pacers. Hill later recovered the Logoman cards online. Now he chases all sorts of cards, pack by pack and box by box.
"I miss a lot but sometimes you get big hits," he said. "I don't really buy singles, I go for the chase. I like to rip the packs open and get something. I feel like the card means more when you do that."
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Friends at school are what got DiPietro into collecting back in the late 1950s when he was a kid growing up on the city's deep West Side.
DiPietro was 9 years old when he started collecting baseball cards, which he bought with money he got from collecting soda bottles around the neighborhood with a little red wagon. In the early 1980s, DiPietro started investing in sports cards as a business, not just a hobby.
After all, "my sons got interested in cards," DiPietro said, "and I said, 'Why not?'"
DiPietro has seen customers who first came in as kids bring their own children to the store. "In one case, I have a grandfather, the son and the grandson, all three of them, three generations here at a time," he said.
That's usually the case behind the card displays. DiPietro's son Jeff DiPietro and grandson Jordan Correa help run the store, with assists from a few other relatives.
"It is interesting because it is like little windows of nostalgia," Jeff DiPietro said of sports cards' cross-generational appeal. "It seems like when one seemingly closes for the older generation it opens for the younger one. And then the older one opens the window again, too."
Jeff DiPietro started collecting cards in the '80s when he and his brother were kids in Ohio playing stickball in the streets, while Correa got the trading card bug in the early 2000s with Pokémon cards. At the time, neither saw their cards as a future investment.
"We would play the games and if we lost our Pokémon in a battle we'd rip up the card," Correa said with a laugh. "We didn't think much of it at the time."
That's not the case with collectors today. Correa said kids often come into Sports Cards Plus just as versed in the encyclopaedic knowledge of the hobby as the grown-ups. Some even spend the same kind of grown-up money. Yet often those young collectors still swap cards with their buddies with that same schoolyard abandon.
"It's definitely a mix of both: the kids that don't care and then the kids that do care," Correa said. "But either way, they do have a good idea of how the hobby works."
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So how should you enter this Byzantine world of card-stock treasures that include "parallels," which look the same as base cards only with different border colors in more limited numbers, and "relics," which like the Logoman cards are rare cards embedded with a piece of memorabilia such as fabric from a player's jersey?
Again, collect within your means. Remember that Chrome is a premium version of Topps standard sports cards with smaller print runs and better odds at parallels and other inserts. Chrome cards cost more but will be more valuable, Charlie DiPietro said.
For instance, a Value Box of Topps' regular 2025/26 NBA cards has 82 cards for $24.99. A Chrome Value Box has 28 cards for $49.99.
"They have all these different levels to make it so that people can decide what their affordability level is," DiPietro said. "And as you go up in cost of the box, it makes it easier to get something valuable. But if you're just in it for the fun, you can go to the cheaper boxes."
Jeff DiPietro seconded another one of his dad's truisms: "As long as they're having fun, if something is worth a lot of money then you win twice."
Correa said it's easy to get overwhelmed, so do your homework. Watch YouTube videos of box openings to get a better sense of the cards that are out there, he said, then get out there and talk with other collectors for guidance. Reach out to shop owners as well as online influencers for tips, too.
Jeff DiPietro stressed it's best to figure out a point of no return and to never pass it. He noted he had a friend who spent $5,000 looking for a Wembanyama autographed card that would have cost him about $1,000 on eBay.
Hill could relate. That day at Sports Cards Plus, he tore through 10 boxes of Chrome Baseball cards in the hunt for a super-rare Debut Patch card, which features a piece of the player's game-worn jersey from his first major league game.
Hill struck out on that count but still had fun playing.
